The woman, Shellee Hale, a life coach who obtained a private investigator’s license, was sued by Too Much Media LLC in 2008 for posting what it said was defamatory statements on a message board about its products and its principals based in part on information from anonymous sources.

In the latest twist in a case that has gone all the way to the state Supreme Court, a Monmouth County Superior Court judge said Hale was not entitled to the protection despite a claim that she was writing a nonfiction book on internet pornography.

The case became the focus of attention in 2009. In a hearing before Superior Court Judge Louis Locascio in Freehold, Hale — who launched several websites that she said were related to her investigative work — contended she was a journalist and was therefore protected from disclosing her sources.

Locascio disagreed, freeing the company’s attorney to take her deposition, and she was expected to disclose her source. But the deposition was delayed while Hale appealed.

The state Supreme Court ruled Hale was not working as a journalist when she wrote the comments on the message board — unlike articles produced by news organizations — and therefore not protected by the state’s shield law.

Hale then returned to the trial level, saying the Supreme Court ruling established new standards regarding the application of the shield law for the internet, and she insisted she should be allowed to show she met those standards.

But Superior Court Judge Linda Grasso Jones, who took over the case after Locascio retired, said the state Supreme Court upheld the protection in certain cases for the authors of nonfiction books, but that Hale had not mentioned her role in writing a nonfiction book in her previous interactions with the court.

In a 25-page opinion, Jones said Hale also didn’t explain why she submitted a sworn statement in 2009 saying she was working on "fictional story."

She said Hale’s "failure to address this inconsistency" was problematic because made it "difficult for the court to find her assertion that she had been working on a nonfiction book credible."

Joel Kreizman, an Ocean Township attorney representing TMM, has argued that Hale is not a journalist and fabricated the purpose of her website to seek the protection and that allowing her to claim the protection now would give her a "second bite at the apple."

"How she could bring that up now is beyond me," Kreizman said after the ruling. "She just continues to say things without any regard to whether they’re true or not."

Hale’s attorney, Jeffrey Pollock, said she was deciding whether to appeal.

Pollock said Hale has tried to provide information without disclosing her source, but that the system "sets it up for a Catch-22."

"If you don’t put in more proofs, you lose the very thing you’re trying to protect," he said.